A History of the Peninsular War, Vol. 2, Jan.-Sep. 1809: From the Battle of Corunna to the End of the Talavera Campaign

In early 1809, the Iberian Peninsula teetered on the edge of history. Napoleon's Grand Armée had swept across Spain, overthrowing the Bourbon monarchy, but the conquest remained unfinished. The French emperor faced a deepening quagmire: restive Spanish provinces, a shattered but re-forming Spanish army, and a resurgent British expeditionary force under a relatively unknown lieutenant-general named Sir Arthur Wellesley. This second volume of Charles Oman's monumental history traces nine months of extraordinary military turbulence: the British evacuation at Corunna, the French repositioning across the Peninsula, the disastrous Spanish defeat at Ucles, and Wellesley's masterclass in maneuver warfare that drove the French from Oporto before culminating in the hard-fought victory at Talavera. Oman, the preeminent military historian of his generation, renders these campaigns with granular tactical precision while never losing sight of the strategic stakes. The result is both a definitive account of a pivotal chapter in the Napoleonic Wars and a masterclass in how military history ought to be written.